Hey, if you want to use the Ubuntu computers in the office then you need to get someone who already has a user account on them to make an account for you. You need to get an account made on both computers, they are not tied to each other in any way.

If people who want accounts post to this thread, I will come in and make them all at once.

But as I understand there should not be too many accounts, as these computers are for the office people to use for office work, and not for everyone.

We're trying to stop people from using 'shared' accounts (where everyone knows the password), because it's a mess and a ticking timebomb. General files that a lot of people need (posters etc) are mixed up with very sensitive files (e.g. letters to people), there are multiple versions of the same files in different places on different computers and no one knows which is the latest version, none of it is backed up, and having everyone's files all over the desktop on one user account is a massive mess and not organised or good for anyone. We have been here before. Especially in a place like the Forest, where the people doing roles such as admin, accounts and EVS changeover frequently, it is important to have a system for organising files if we want to get things done effectively. We (Shannon, Catalina and I) deleted the 'jane' account because everyone was sharing it. The tres account is also a bad idea, there should be 'martin' and 'chris' accounts.

What we need is one place to keep all the files where they can be organised properly, are backed up, and where files that need to be shared between certain people can be shared with those people but not necessarily everyone else. We want to try using Dropbox for this.

If you want to have files that you can access from your account on either of the office computers (or from computers elsewhere, such as your laptop etc), if you want to share files with other people, you should use dropbox. It'll also mean that the files are safely backed up, and that everything is kept in one place where it can be organised. As an added bonus, you can always login to the dropbox website and access your files through the web interface even if you're not on a computer that has dropbox installed (e.g. if you're borrowing someone else's laptop, in the library, an internet cafe, etc.)

So get someone to make you a user account on the office computers, then login and go to Applications -> Internet -> Dropbox to create a dropbox account for yourself, or to link your existing dropbox account to that computer. Put all your files that you want to be backed up and accessible from anywhere into your dropbox folder. If you want to share some files with some other people, make a shared folder in dropbox and invite them to it. Read the instructions or watch the video on the dropbox website to see how.

If you don't understand or need help with dropbox, Catalina or I can get you started, just ask.

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I've had it with you. If I had an image of a laser gun I would absolutely position it right here in my hand...Ha! I have a real laser absolutely positioned in my hand!

Hi would be good to have an account, don't use it much but comes in handy sometimes,I too was using janes account, would be good to have access to some posters for the kitchen/cafe/licence stuff, Somtimes also have to do references for people maybe we could have a hared folder between KM's for this and the training Hasap stuff as well. Might be good to try and have a generall kitchen folder for all this stuff for KMS to share.apart from checking some things on internet not much else needed for myself.Thanks, see you soon

Yes, but I've been asking everyone repeatedly for ages and they all say Forest has easily less than 2GB of stuff. Remember, not everything needs to go into dropbox, just the important files for EVS, admin, accounts, etc. And only the files we're working on now/need access to now need to be in there, historical files can be moved elsewhere to save space. Also, it's 2GB per person, each one of us will have our own personal free dropbox account, and not everyone needs to have access to all files. For example, Shannon & Catalina created an EVS shared folder and added each other to it, Chris and Martin could make an accounts one, but Catalina might not need to be in the accounts share, and Martin might not need to be in the EVS share, and so on.

What alternative is there? All I can think of is that we pay money for space on an online backup service like rsync.net. I could configure the computers in the office so that an online backup like this would just appear as a folder that people could drag and drop to. I could set it up on people's laptops also. And we'd keep all the files in one place, instead of several different Dropbox shares (which could potentially get messy if we're not well organised about it).

But I worry that it wouldn't get used. It would need a web interface frontend that people can easily login to from their laptops to upload and download files. Even then, I'm not sure it would get used. The advantage of dropbox is that it works exactly the same on Wiindows, Linux and Macs, it is easy enough to install and use that people can do it without my help (possibly after an initial introduction), and once you start saving files in dropbox then it just automatically backs them up whenever you change them, you don't need to manually backup the files, so in theory backups will happen regularly.

...So this is why I've been going around for ages desperately trying to convince everyone to start using dropbox to backup and share files. The hope is that once I get enough people started they will keep using it on their own, and will get others started as necessary. Maybe it's hopeless idealism.

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I've had it with you. If I had an image of a laser gun I would absolutely position it right here in my hand...Ha! I have a real laser absolutely positioned in my hand!

Thanks for posting all this mister chombee... The kitchen files are with me now. Tomorrow I will be back online properly and can pass them onto their proper owner. I'll send Stephen and Scout a link to a shared folder!